We’re baaack!In the inaugural episode of the second season of Whiskey and International Relations…
Episode 1: Gates of the West
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Recent Posts
The Uncanny Effects of the UK Court of Appeal’s ruling on the Proscription of Palestine Action
In July 2025, the UK government designated Palestine Action as a proscribed terrorist under the Terrorism Act 2000, making it a criminal offence to be a member of, or...
What Politics and IR can teach AI pedagogy
[Editor’s Note: This is a write-up of a workshop proceedings. It is posted under my name, but the participants wrote the piece; they are listed at the end.] If Politics and IR urgently needs to...
How Russian economic policy is gender
Every year I make my third year Bachelor students read Carol Cohn’s article “Sex and Death in the rational world of defense intellectuals” and they are genuinely surprised by the number of penile...
More Recent Posts
What’s at Stake in the Indigenous Empire Debate
I have a new open-access article out in Global Studies Quarterly, “What’s at Stake in the Indigenous Empire Debate,” in which I argue against historian Pekka Hämäläinen’s claims that the Comanche and the Lakota constituted empires. Many others have provided reasons why we ought not to think of the...
The Gulf is a vital lynchpin of global stability, and it goes far beyond energy
The US and Israel’s war on Iran and regional instability threatens to disrupt critical global migration patterns. These serve as vital pressure release valves for overcrowded and socio-economically stagnant mega cities in the global south. Their disruption may cut off vital income for tens of...
The Scripts We Perform: Militarized Masculinity and the Gendered Order
Over the past month, U.S. President Donald Trump has shifted from misogynistic jabs to full‑scale performances of militarized authority, an evolution entirely consistent his political brand of hegemonic, martial masculinity. In late 2025, U.S. Chief of...
Religious nationalism makes the profane sacred: True faith uses the sacred to heal the world
For Western Christians, Holy Week—the most important time of the church calendar—just finished. Like many other Christians, it is a powerful and challenging time of the year. We are meant to reflect on how we are self-assured in our devotion to Jesus’ teachings one minute and turn on Him the next,...
Watching Scientific Progress in Action
Reacting to a recent event on the study of religion, conflict and peace
Was I wrong on the Gulf states and Iran? An exercise in academic humility
When I was in graduate school, my training included the methods and theories of international relations but also some of the epistemology and philosophy of science behind the sub-field. We discussed what makes a good research program and how can we tell if we’re making any progress in...
The Best and Worst of U.S. Foreign Policy(?)
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) recently published results of a survey of historians on the best and worst foreign policy decisions in U.S. history. There are few surprises—wars in Vietnam and Iraq fared poorly, and the post-WWII creation of the institutions we associate with the...
6+1 Questions about Exit from International Organizations
What is the name of the book and what are its coordinates? The book is Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change. It was published in June 2025 by Cambridge University Press. What’s the argument? Governments leave international organizations — such as the...
Iran and the shadow of the Kosovo intervention
When I was in grad school in the mid-aughts, one Professor was a die-hard supporter of George W. Bush’s foreign policy. When challenged over the legality of Iraq, he noted that it is inconsistent for any liberal to oppose the invasion of Iraq while supporting the NATO intervention in Kosovo. Both...
Rubio’s civilizational appeals will backfire
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference demonstrated he is a better diplomat than Vice President J.D. Vance, although that’s not much of a hurdle to clear. Where Vance gave a bullying lecture, Rubio’s speech focused on emphasizing the importance of...
“Fair Trade” and the revenge against the “Foreigner”: From Chamberlain to Trump
A century before Trump’s tariff threats, Joseph Chamberlain pitched the same idea: use duties as a “big revolver” to force rivals into “fair trade.” That history helps explain why “unfairness” rhetoric and coercive foreign policy keep returning when hegemonic powers decline.
What’s with all the racism?
I’ve been wanting to write this post for some time. But every week just brings more bad news. More terrible examples. In November last year, the Dutch government almost collapsed over racist remarks made by one of the coalition government ministers. December was witness to the...